Eastern District of Texas Federal Court Practice

Lawyerist.com - the law practice blog

One of the legal blogs I have been reading with interest in recent months is Lawyerist, a law practice blog, published by Sam Glover andAaron Street, along with a team of other writers.  It provides advice on law firm marketing, practice management, technology, career development, law school success, legal ethics, and how to start a law practice.  Ever wonder if file sync services like Dropbox are secure?  Look here.  Want to minimize WTF moments as a young lawyer?   There's a post for that as well.  

The posts are not only informative and interesting - they are also frequently very entertaining.  My favorite are the highly opinionated posts by Leo Mulvihill, Jr., on, for example, how lawyers should dress (including shoe care for those of you that didn't inherit your daddy's shoe shine supplies) how to iron a shirt, and briefcases (thanks for the tip Leo - you and I now have something in common...).  You don't have to agree with the opinions, obviously, but they provide a useful - and correct - baseline level of advice as to what is clearly safe for new lawyers with no previous experience with business dress.  As the saying goes, you have to know the rules before you can break them.  For comparison purposes, the clothing advice is significantly more conservative than what you'd get from, say, Alan Flusser, but I wholeheartedly agree with the premise.  A lawyer - at least a male lawyer - gains few points for stylish professional dress, but can lose points for not knowing the basics of dressing like a grown up.  Leo's posts will keep young lawyers out of trouble while they learn where they would like to innovate, sartorially speaking.  For that, I'd recommend Flusser's Dressing the Man: Mastering the Art of Permanent Fashion.  You'll never look at gray pants the same again, and you'll obsess over the relative size of patterns.  In fact, after reading Flusser every day becomes an adventure into deciding how many patterns you will mix.  Again, Leo counsels that young lawyers stay away from such decisions, and provides a basic set of rules for firm-acceptable dress.  He even has a post about office casual.  Although his definition is a bit strict, again, it keeps the inexperienced dresser on the safe side of the line.

The blog is probably particularly useful to new lawyers and to those opening or maintaining solo practices, since it goes over the kinds of things that newbie lawyers or newbie law firm managers (these days those jobs are frequently combined) run into with little guidance from their law schools or mentors in the practice.  The associated online community is a bit of information overload for me, as well as being a bit of a technological challenge to participate in, but I find the posts a very good source of information.

Law Office Management: current trial setup

I've spent the last week living out of a hotel working with a trial team trying a patent case in Tyler, and have had a chance to try out a different layout with my trial equipment.  I brought two briefcases plus the the ScanSnap in its bag and used a little different setup I thought I'd share.  I'm not saying we still don't roll in stacks of boxes, and keep bookcases of notebooks in the courtroom, and I do rely on those, but in terms of what I actually bring in to do my part of the job, this is where I'm at right now.

Briefcase #1 is my courtroom bag, and it contains:

• Levenger notepad and pens (have to be moderately old school in trial)
• O'Connor's Federal Rules rulebook.  Don't leave the office without it. 
• poly plastic sleeves for papers (one sleeve per task, i.e. voir dire, witness, motion argument, etc., plus one for receipts and another couple for general stuff that accumulates during trial - argument notes, etc.).   The poly sleeves have been my secret weapon (uh, well maybe not any more) since law school, when an office I worked in used them to route contracts and other documents to be reviewed.  Ever since then I keep a stack at hand to separate and protect documents.  As useful as they are in my office, they're doubly useful in a briefcase during trial.
• 13" MacBook Air w/mouse
• iPad
• iPad/iPhone and MacBook Air chargers

Since all our case files are electronic, we move them over to DropBox shortly before trial, so literally everything in the case is on both the iPad and the MacBook Air, hence no need for pleadings or motion notebooks, at least for me.  I annotate documents on both the MacBook and the iPad (using iAnnotate and a stylus) depending on which has the better wifi connection, although I try to annotate on the iPad so I can hand it to cocounsel or the Court when it has a document or transcript page.  Being able to hand the iPad to cocounsel or put it on the Elmo is a distinct advantage compared to a laptop, I've discovered in recent hearings and trials.  I do not yet use multiple iPads during trial (unlike Seattle attorney Ian "Carries Three iPads" Crosby, who memorably did so at the podium while examining a witness during a trial in front of Judge Gilstrap in Marshall in October).  If that many documents are needed, I usually have to fall back on creating notebooks.  But I usually only use paper for an outline for voir dire/witnesses/motions, and any documents I'll need to hand up during those proceedings, and those I keep in separate colored poly sleeves.  All of that - plus trial notes - get scanned, filed, and the paper originals shredded as soon as the trial is over.

Briefcase #2 and the ScanSnap are set up in the trial war room (hotel or our offices across the street, depending on where we are working).  That bag consists of:

• the main office laptop & travel mouse
• the Lenovo second monitor.
• ScanSnap (for scanning while away from the office)
• wireless headset for Dragon Naturally Speaking dictation
• Apple charger for iPad and iPhone (so I don't have to take the trial bag chargers out when I get to the war room and accidentally leave one).

My cocounsel usually have full docking stations in the war room for their laptops with extra keyboards and large monitors, but I don't find that necessary - although that's exactly what I do have in my Tyler office.  

Next trial I probably won't bother with the second bag other than to bring the Lenovo (and leave it in the war room), but I haven't installed the software yet to run it off the Mac (for a second monitor for the Mac I have been using the iPad via Air Display, but thus far it is spectacularly unreliable).  I ended up not using the ScanSnap this trial, but it's so easy to unhook from my desk at the office and carry around that it's worth bringing just in case.

The list of what I actually carry varies daily, but this is the general layout, and it's worked very well.

 

Law Office Management - Lenovo portable monitor

As readers know, I like to post on the latest office technology I'm using (or at least playing with).  This time it's the Lenovo Thinkvision LT1421 portable monitor.

Last fall we had some graphics guys working out of the Hub and one of them had this 14" portable monitor that slid into its own tray.  It has no power brick - it plugs into a USB on the attached computer so one cord carries signal and power.

I have to admit I actually use it as a third monitor on my desktop (not the one shown above - just to show relative size and brightness), but I also toss it into my bag whenever I am on the road so I have a dual monitor setup wherever I am.  I keep a USB cable attached to the tray by rubber band so I always have what I need.  It takes up was less than half the space of a normal laptop, and weighs nothing.  I highly, highly recommend it if you travel and take your laptop with you.

Law Office Management - from Outlook to Google Apps, Evernote & RTM

It will come as no surprise to those that know me that my oldest, Grayson, taped off the spaces under the tree on Christmas Eve so that gifts from Santa would be properly organized.  I absolutely don't know where he got the organizing thing from, but in any event I wanted to post on how I have recently tweaked the way I use a three common programs to organize my work, replacing one program I had been using for the past several years.

Ahem.

Since I opened SBPS' Marshall office (coming up on five years ago next month) one of my interests has been law office management, i.e. how do you organize your work so as to be as efficient as possible.  I wrote an article on how to start a one-lawyer office for the Texas Bar Journal in July 2008, and more recently have been posting periodically on specific things of interest, from digital voice recorders, printers versus copiers, and desktop scanners to ruminations on briefcases and office chairs.  If you work for a large firm that already has all this figured out, it may not be of much interest to you, but if you're in a smaller firm, or puttering around a renovated shoe store where you have the freedom to decide how you're going.  Or OCD - whatever works.

I am officially at least two and half years behind posting on the subject (I have yet to note how I use this newfangled iPad thing, for example) but one of the nice things about the holidays is that if the dates fall right, as they do this year, you can take a breath and get some perspective on some of the things you're doing, and how you might do them better.  So in this post, I wanted to talk about a change I've made this year in how I work.

Google Apps (Mail, Calendar & Contacts)

For that past four years, I've been a devoted Outlook user, as long time readers know from my prior post on the subject.  There was nothing I liked better than fiddling with the calendar, tasks and e-mail settings to organize the way I worked more efficiently.  The problem is that in a small office without an Exchange server, syncing the calendar and tasks and contacts across various computers was difficult, requiring third party applications that never seemed to work right.  Eventually we just sync'ed the office calendar to Google so our staff could get to it on mobile devices.  I could access my e-mails and other information on other devices, but I really couldn't work them, and it was as a practical matter impossible to see or work a task list anywhere but at my desktop (which is a laptop, so it was somewhat portable, but still...).  As the daily load of e-mails increased, it got more and more difficult to work outside the office, and to catch up when I got back.

The program also suffered from undiagnosable glitches that eventually tranformed it into a positively Lovercraftian thing - an eldritch horror that consumed a couple of dozen gigs on my computer (seriously), took on average 45 minutes a day to load, and would not talk to anyone in the office but me, and it wasn't so sure I could be trusted either.  Something had to be done, and our computer guy finally suggested that we just move the whole kit and kaboodle to Google Apps. 

The move took one morning, and by the afternoon we all had clean, synced calendars, contacts and e-mails - all accessible from office machines, tablets, laptops, iPads - you name it.  And for the last four months it's worked almost perfectly.

On our vacation last month I read up on the mail and calendar functions and tweaked how I organize them, putting into play some of things I took from reading Lifehacker: The Guide to Working Smarter, Faster and Better by Adam Pash and Gina Trapani, and reorganized the mail functions to make better use of folders.  

The basic idea is to keep your e-mail in box pristine by filing everything into the proper box as it comes in.  In my practice, I receive a large number of e-mails each day that need to be read, but don't require immediate action, and the book reinforced the importance of parsing out these emails immediately in order to focus on items that require action.  Because I've learned that if I don't identify the important ones somehow, they fall back in with the others and may not be seen again for week (this scene from The Mummy II conveys pretty much how I see my in box much of the time.  You really don't want anything important left down there).   Part of the acute need for doing this came about as a result of starting to use Dragon Naturally Speaking to dictate timekeeping entries, which works much better if you can group the dictation work, but I'll address that in a later post.

In any event, while I decline to have the program automatically file e-mails in the appropriate folders - I believe in putting a Mark 1 eyeball on everything when it comes in - I do shovel items that don't require immediate action into a separate folder as soon as I determine that's the case, and postpone work that folder to when the items requiring action permit it.  Ideally, I can get the day's e-mails from that folder worked at the end of the day if I haven't already, but that's not always the case.

As far as calendars, Google permits adding multiple calendars, so we have color-coded calendars for the office, for the building (to account for visitors and when the office is rented to visiting trial teams), for individuals in the office (it's awkward when you show up for a coworker's massage by mistake - I'm just saying), for Cowboys games (the NFL provides Google calendars for this critical information), and for my sons' Scout troops, and my TripIt calendar for travel information.  And all of this is accessible on mobile devices, although I do use a third party app called (appropriately) Calendars by Readdle.  These calendars can be shown or filtered out depending on what you're looking for, and the color coding means that you can tell immediately what's important and what's not.  

I don't pretend to know all of what the Google Apps environment can do, but I have found it to be far superior to what I was doing, very flexible, and scalable from a small office on up.  Perhaps most importantly, it's reliable, and doesn't require a lot of my time to diagnose and fix problems.  Yes, I spend a lot of time color coding events, but sadly, for me, that's entertainment.

Evernote

Almost any productivity book recently will talk about Evernote as a good way to keep notes.  I have been studying and reading about it for a couple of years now, but really had not used it for the office.  It is another example of a program that's so powerful and so flexible that it takes a while to figure out how to use it - and to remember how you decided to use it each time you do use it.  

For office note-taking, I had been either taking notes on my trusty Levenger pads and then scanning those in on the desktop scanner and saving them in a notes folder under the specific case (which is still how I handle notes from hearings or trials), or when at my desktop, taking notes in Microsoft's OneNote, which has a iPad app allowing you to access notes on that device.  (There is a note taking function in Outlook but it's not very robust - essentially just an electronic Post-it).

But what I discovered on my recent trip is that there isn't an app (or at least I didn't have it) for the MacBook Air I use when travelling, so I found myself stuck on the other side of the planet without the drafts I had written before leaving the office - meaning I had to start from scratch on chair's columns for the Litigation Section's Advocate and News for the Bar publications as well as my upcoming chair's column in the Texas Bar Journal and an article on IP law development in 2012 that will also be in next month's bar journal.

The moral of that story is probably that lawyers shouldn't take vacations, but I decided to dig a little deeper and see how I could avoid the problem in the future.  Lifehacker again suggested that I actually use Evernote for all my note taking, so I started keeping it open on my desktop, and began keeping notes for conference calls, items to be worked on, etc., all within a "Cases" tab.  I have not yet figured out a good way to export the completed notes into pdf form for filing (I had that down pretty well in OneNote) but they're not going anywhere, and I can filter out the completed ones using a tag.  So I've now abandoned OneNote and am using Evernote for all my office note taking - essentially replacing the old legal pad and most of my file (or project) folders.  I can e-mail items to Evernote and they're included - something that most apps these days permit, and which is a great feature.

RTM (Remember the Milk)

One of the biggest problems with replacing Outlook was what to do about tasks.  The underlying problem with Outlook really wasn't with how it handled tasks - I liked that fine.  I tried several task programs that advertised functionality with Google Apps, but none had the ease of use but with sufficient flexibility that I needed.  I really needed something for use on mobile devices, but which was also accessible from a desktop.

During my search I read rave reviews of RTM, but I couldn't believe that what looked like a grocery list program (with a silly name and icon) would be the best candidate.  (It would be interesting to figure out why Evernote's elephant doesn't bother me, but RTM's cow does, but I don't have time for that right now).  But, again, I had been through ye olde app store and tried everything else, and nothing worked - it was either too hard to access or enter task info, or it wasn't accessible on mobile devices without an Internet connection - which in event took too long to pull up in many cases.

I have been really, really impressed with RTM.  The most important feature - ease of access to insert a task - has worked out great, with addition of a couple of Google-friendly gadgets, and I can work my task list on my phone, my iPad or my desktop no matter where I am.  Actually the desktop applications are the most difficult interfaces - I actually tend to check things off, sort and edit lists on the iPad.  I can organize tasks by work/personal, by date, by tag (maybe a case name or the bar group), by priority, and even by location.  The latter means that with one click I can see what tasks are within a mile (you can set the radius) of my location, so, for example, I can scoop up all the Walmart or Lowes of office tasks while I'm in the right place.  Most tasks can be done from any computer, so they don't have locations, but some require access to files or papers at the office, or at the house, or at the courthouse.  

As with Evernote, I can e-mail task items to the program and they sit in an "in box" folder waiting for assignment and further details the next time I'm in the program.  And as I mentioned, the Google apps for the program let you include it in your mail or calendar view so that tasks can be viewed and edited by date.  It took a couple of weeks for me to figure out which Google apps to use to do this, but I think I have it figured out now.

For an old DayTimer groupie like me, one of the other cool feature is that the app allows you to view not just tasks to be done, but what you have done.  Being able to see what I have actually done on a day is a little incentive to me to actually get things checked off my list, and this is the first program that actually provided such a list.  And here's the cool part - it actually shows the items with strikethrough. And at bottom, that's what this is all about - helping me be more productive by prioritizing my time so I focus on what needs doing the most, and motivating me to be more efficient.

I'll be posting more in the coming days about some other tweaks I've started around the office, from cloud storage and dictation software to this darn iPad thing, but I wanted to get out these three programs that have at leats for me replaced what I used to use Outlook for.

Law Office Management: Internet Calls / Video Conferencing

I'm updating the phone and video conferencing section of my paper on law office management and wanted to see how people are using online services such as Skype, or Logitech's Vid for calls and video calls.  I have both now (just added Skype) but am curious whether there's an emerging favorite in the legal world.  At present the one I actually use the most is Apple's FaceTime so I can have video calls with an attorney in our firm's Plano office, but I would really rather use something that actually uses the webcams on our computers.  (That's not a comment on whether she gets too much makeup on her iPhone.  Oh, wait, maybe it is). 

As I said, I just added Skype (name is michael.smith8639) but as I have no one I know on the service it's a little difficult to call people to hear/see how it works.  I'm just curious whether people who probably already have cell phones, wireless headsets, and calling plans are using services such as these to video conference from their desks.  And if they do have it, do you actually use it, or do you prefer audio-only calls.

Law Office Management: Printers, Lighting & Network Cabling

As readers know, I occasionally post on subjects dealing with law office management, an area I got interested in while writing an article Starting A New Law Office: A Checklist Download 08-06 - TBJ Starting A New Law Office for the Texas Bar Journal four years ago. 

In recent weeks we've made a few more changes around the Hub that I thought might be of interest along these lines, specifically dealing with copiers/printers, lighting and network cabling.

Copiers/Printers

As I said in the TBJ article, if you practice primarily in courts that have electronic filing, you may find that you really don't need a traditional copier.  For a year or so, we did not have a copier at all, relying on individual desktop printers and a networked all-in-one, along with the services of the local print shop a block from the office when we had heavier or color jobs.  But when we got into a major case in state court which involved early morning hearings and lots of copies, we had to rent one, and we kept it for a couple of years just in case the need arose again.  In part that was because the all-in-one just wasn't getting the job done - it was slow, unreliable, and didn't scan and print two-sided.

But a couple of weeks ago I reevaluated our need for a large printer in light of what PC Magazine had to say in its review of the HP Officejet Pro 8600 Plus e-All-in-One, which it gave its editor's choice rating.  The thing scans and prints two sided, in b&w and color, scans to designated network folders, and print via e-mail if you need it to, i.e. I can e-mail a file to it to be printed.  It also set itself up on our network with virtually no guidance from me, which means it is smarter than me, which something I generally look for. The cost per sheet is 1.6 cents b&w and 7.2 cents color. 

It scans significantly slower than my ScanSnap and isn't quite as intelligent about when d/s scanning is needed, but it allows the rest of the office to scan documents as they come in so we remain paperless.  (It also prints photos, scans to various card formats and has numerous other bells and whistles which I haven't found any need for).

Most importantly, the cost of the printer - $219 (it's actually cheaper now) is substantially less than the per-month rental charge we were paying for even a low-end copier with duplexing features.  But my favorite part is the amount of space it saves.  The old copier took up the entire space shown by the table in the attached photo of our copy/supply room.  The photos are somewhat deceptive - the table is actually five feet long and two feet wide - substantially larger than the countertop.  

Of course we still need to rent high speed copiers for trial but that is something trial teams always do, no matter what copier we have.  But absent trial, experience has taught us that with electronic filing we just don't need a copier - if we have a significant print job we can just get the print shop across the square to do it.  It is just rare - exceedingly rare - that we need to print more than a good all-in-one can handle.  And even including the ink, the cost appears to be one-twelfth - or less - the cost of a traditional copier.

Lighting

The Hub - the renovated 1870's shoe store building that houses SBPS' Marshall office, is just about the only building I have ever seen where the lighting at night actually makes it look like the sets on TV's The West Wing, i.e. you have enough accent lighting to find your way around, but nowhere near enough to actually work.   And that's by design - in part because the 1897 metal ceilings look their best when they're underlit, we were consciously emphasizing the artwork around the office, and because it's hard to fill 14' tall spaces with light.  But it was also because I'd rather add task lighting as needed, because most studies conclude that traditional work areas are usually terribly overlit with twice the fluorescent ceiling fixtures they really need. So we started dark and loaded (and are continuing to load) the office with track and other accent and task lighting.

But the two rooms where we were consistently underlit were in the 113 side conference room, and in the 11 side "atrium" where we restored the 1928-era shoe store shelving "look" to serve as the primary war room during trials.

In the conference room (shown at left with original fixture) we had track lighting for the artwork and a ceiling fan with light fixture, but the bulbs wer limited to four 40 watt candelabra which at best only dimly lit the room.  (Note to self - never buy a ceiling fan without checking the type of bulbs it uses against where you'll be hanging it).  We recently replaced that fixture with a new alabaster hanging fixture which provides almost three times the light, providing the bright light that the room needs to function well.  (Note the changed color of the table with the additional light). 

We also  changed out the artwork in order to feature Carol Pace's painting which uses the original blueprints of the Marshall federal courthouse when it was first constructed as our post office in the 1910's.  (As you can tell, my boys like the room just fine for an evening of McDonald's, Angry Birds and a movie).

Over on the 111 side, this picture from 1928 was the guide for the renovation of the principal war room, which includes original shelving (resized for notebooks instead of shoe boxes) one one wall, and rolling file box shelving on the side walls (which most trial teams move out of the way to accommodate paralegal work stations and copiers). 

During the day, the restored skylight provides plenty of light, but for the trial team that chooses to work after dark, the lighting presented some problems.  Most of that we solved with task lights - lamps and so forth, but during the hiatus between our last trial in October and the next one set for February we added more lighting, including the two wall sconces shown in this picture, plus a set of track lighting on the back side of the arched opening.  Now the space has sufficient ambient lighting throughout, even at night.

The current arrangement avoids the sin of flooding an old building with too much light, but provides plenty for working by.

Network Cabling

Since our offices in Marshall consist of an "office" side and a "trial" side for visiting trial teams (the bottom half of the attached floor plan), we installed the network cabling with that in mind, so that trial teams could set up their own networks without having to run new cabling - just plug their switch into the existing system and select which of the Ethernet drops they needed. 

But we wanted the system to be a turn-key one where the visiting trial team could keep their equipment (switches and servers) in their own wiring and supply closet, and still wanted the ability to have our phones on the "rent" side for use when we weren't in trial, as well as the ability to hook visiting SBPS lawyers working from the rent side into our network as needed.  In other words, we wanted to have our cake, eat it, sell it, and rent it.

We finally got that over the weekend by reconfiguring the existing network into "office" and "visiting" networks, and relocating the Ethernet connection for the "visiting" network to the supply closet on the visiting side, using the twin sleeves we installed under the floor during the renovation two years ago.  We now don't need to change anything for most visiting trial teams, but retain the flexibility to provide additional Ethernet drops to the trial team (by converting the visiting side phone drops to visiting network data drops - everything in this building is Cat 6, so there's no difference between phone and data cabling), or pull some back into our network, simply by plugging and unplugging a couple of cables.

Practicing law is rewarding and enjoyable, but I also enjoy working with the infrastructure of the office that allows it to happen.  In coming weeks I'll post on how I use my iPad as a third monitor and otherwise try to spend more time during the day working while standing.  Who knows what else I'll come up with. 

 

Desktop sheet-fed scanner

It has been a while since I have posted under the "Law Office Management" tab, and in that time we've renovated a building and moved into it.  But one of the things that hasn't changed - even though we have just a little bit of storage space now (as long as the thing to be stored fits into a shoe box) - is that our office is pretty aggressively paperless.  That's easy to do with a substantial federal court practice because virtually everything other than the occasional paper copy of discovery responses comes in electronic format already, but there are still more than a few paper documents that need to be inputted - lately that's primarily hearing and trial notes.  While we have a large copier/printer/scanner that can scan in bulk for discovery and state court documents, I had been reading a lot of good things about a desktop sheet-fed scanner, so I tried one out a few months back, and I can't say enough good things about it.  (Why take notes on paper?  Well, I have tried taking them on the iPad, and frankly, while I can two-finger type almost as fast as I can scribble, I cannot switch between letters and numbers nearly fast enough to keep up.  Best example is status conferences - I simply can't type dates fast enough.  Some hearings I have done it, but that's usually when I have a client or cocounsel that isn't there and wants a report immediately.  But usually I use the iPad to look at the case documents and take notes on paper).

I use a Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 that I keep on my credenza, usually in closed mode, where it looks like a loaf of bread with aluminum poisoning.  When I need it, I pop the covers open and the software starts up and I can immediately scan anything from individual pages to a multipage document.  I then save the files into the appropriate folder (often into the "Home Filing" subfolder in my DropBox folder - otherwise usually to my desktop where I then drag and drop them where I want them).  Where I've found this to be really useful lately is in getting hearing and trial notes into the case file immediately (last month I usually scanned the morning's notes during the lunch break) so that the notes are available in the courtroom on my iPad.  The quality (and speed) is better than the office scanner and even better than the new all-in-one we have in the Tyler office.  I am told that it doesn't do as well with photos so I still scan them on the bed scanner, but it's done just fine slowly digitizing the paper files at home.  For example, this morning I brought a stack of home filing that I scanned in while waiting on e-mails and saved each to the home filing folder.  (Technically I am just transferring the pile of unfiled paper from my in box at home to my home filing folder on the computer, but all happiness requires a little denial, right?) Yesterday morning I brought in a short stack of documents I collected during a week in trial and scanned them into the "Trial" subfolder for the case, then shredded or trashed the originals.

The unit is portable, and comes with a bag with a shoulder strap.  To make it easy to pack up and go, I have it plugged into a desktop lamp's AC, and a desktop USB outlet (see photo) so that the power and USB cables stay coiled and can quickly be stuffed into the bag, and I don't have to move the credenza every time I plug it in.

The unit also scans business cards, which can then be edited and saved into Outlook, but the processing software for that is extremely slow, and it takes quite a while to get the information transferred, so while it's a good solution to digitize those cards in your desk drawer, it's not an easy way to get them into your contacts - frankly, it's quicker to dictate or retype.  Or just hunt up the person's v-card.

I highly recommend it if you're trying to get rid of paper - if it isn't easy to scan it, you probably won't do it.  And it doesn't get much easier than this.  The ease of access also means that you'll probably scan enough to get your own scan protocols down - what you call documents, where you save them, and so forth.  I noticed that today - I have started saving every document using the date first, then a description.  Same thing with notes - I use note pads with topic, date, and so forth boxes, so when I scan the document, I capture that data in the document file so I know how to search for it later if I need it.  And since the document can be immediately available on the iPad that sits across the credenza from it, the utility of the paper remains.

Later this week (or next week) I'll get around to the the iPad post I meant to do a year and a half ago, and some really neat programs I've found for it for use in a law office.

Digital Voice Recorder - update of 2008 post

  I received a lot of e-mails after my Starting a New Law Office article ran in the Texas Bar Journal in the summer of 2008 about my solution to the dictation issue, so I ran a detailed post here about the handheld digital voice recorder I used to replace the DictaPhone system that I'd spent the first fifteen years of my career using.

Over two years later I'm still very happy with my choice, but I have to report that my trusty RCA RP5022Bsadly  gave up the ghost yesterday morning after processing 687 dictation files (it numbers them sequentially, so I know precisely how many files it processed).  Since we are used to RCA's "Digital Voice Manager" software for managing and transcribing the files, Pam picked up a replacement at Walmart (still in the low $30's), this time a RCA VR5220-A. The software is essentially the same, and although I am still working to figure out which buttons correspond to the old ones, the functions I use seem to be the same. 

The difference is that, first, the same $30 that bought me 64 megs of storage in 2008 yesterday buys 512 megs, which is approximately 200 hours of recording time, which is way more than Pam says I am allowed to have (she tried to find one with less memory, but no luck).  Second, instead of needing a USB cable to plug into my computer, the new recorder has a pop-out USB connector so it plugs in the same as a thumb drive (and can act as an external hard drive for files if you need it to).  I still need the USB cable for other things, and it's actually slightly annoying to try to find a free port, but it's a nice thought, I suppose.  I does make it simpler to just toss the recorder to Pam so she can download the file rather than doing it myself, since she does not normally have a USB cable plugged in.  Normally I do manually transfer the files, or e-mail them if I'm out of the office, but this does give me an additional option.

Law Office Management: One number to rule them all...

 I've posted previously on some ways to set up a small office phone system inexpensively, but most lawyers these days spend most of their time on cell phones.  And that means that the lawyer may be at the number other than the one you're calling, and means two sets of voice mails, which while theoretically accessible from multiple locations, as a practical matter, isn't, or at the very least requires multiple steps and coordinating with office staff to make sure you're current on who has called for you.  (It also requires that you check your voice mail, which is something I'm really bad at).

I got on the waiting list for a Google Voice number when they came out several weeks ago, but it took a while to get off the waiting list and get a number.  GV bills itself as the telephonic equivalent of Tolkien's "one ring", capable as it is of ruling all other numbers, of finding them and binding them, as the inscription says.  You give out the "master" number and it forwards to whichever phones you've told it to.  A caveat: you cannot at present use an existing number, so you can't just designate your cell number as your GV number, as would be most convenient.  You have to select a new number, and they may or may not have a local number for you, but I didn't really mind - I have been using a out of town number as my fax number through eFax for some time.  And you can search for words or numbers, which allows you to select a number that closely matches one you already have, or spells "tuna" or whatever message you want.  (It also has immense capabilities as for as customizing where phone calls are sent, but I won't get into that - at present for the most part I just manually update it as to where I'm at, so all numbers forward to office when I'm there, and home when I'm not (cell service in the country is not real good - we learned when building our house that their is a "phone tree" in the back yard and to have a decent connection you have to stand under it - so it is a significant benefit in the Smith household to be able to redirect my mother's calls to the house phone so I don't have to go stand in the rain to talk).

GV gives you a single phone number that rings all (or some, or specified of) your phones, but the other useful features include saving your voicemail online, and transcribing your voicemail to text. I particularly like this because I can check my voice mail online or on my phone's inbox, which is far faster than calling it up on the phone.  Other features include the ability to listen in on messages while they are being left (not something I think I'd use, but it's there for telemarketers or, worse, fundraising calls from your alma maters.  When you have degrees from three schools, the calls never stop.) And the ability to make low cost international calls is something that could come in very handy on trips.  You can record also record custom greetings for your favorite callers (here's your opportunity to ratchet up the level of obsequiousness for calls from judicial chambers) or block annoying callers by marking them as spam.

The first step for using the service (once you have the necessary forwarding numbers entered, is to give the new number out so your incoming calls are routed through GV.  Rather than send e-mails out to thousands of people, I started in a low key way, by adding it to my e-mail signature block as the "master" number, and telling (well, asking, really) my paralegal and my wife to use it instead of my cell number.  I don't like listing it as a "Google Voice" number, and I decided against listing it as a "direct" number, because to most of us that has a distinct meaning - it just skips the receptionist and rings your office directly, and this is far more than that - it is an after hours number as well.

I have just started using the service, and can't really opine yet as to whether it's all it is said to be, but it has such enormous potential for letting attorneys stay more up to date with their communications, and save time doing it, that I wanted to raise it.  If you are starting a new office, or switching firms (rare, but it sometimes happens) I would certainly consider using a GV number as a "master" number and push to the background the "office" number.  It is safer than giving out a mobile number on a signature block, which some of us do, but which presents some drawbacks and privacy issues.  While it may take a while to customize the product to your liking, the flexibility is something that I suspect will become very helpful very quickly.

If any readers have any experience withor opinions regarding GV, please post and give us the benefit of your advice.

Law Office Management: Lawyer v. Airline Seat

If your practice is like mine, you spend a fair amount of time in airline seats going to and from meetings, seminars, and various other events.  I don't mind flying at all - but being bent over in airline seats for hours at a time really tends to induce fatigue and headaches, and sleep is often pretty difficult. 
I ran across something in a travel magazine the other day called the "1st Class Sleeper" that I thought might be of some use, and after trying it out last week I thought readers would be interested in it.  The thing is an inflatable back rest (goes from head to seat) that you lay on the seat behind you then inflate only partially using a tube next to your head (just 10-11 breaths), then relax back into.  The diagram to the right pretty accurately explains what it does - it provides support around your back and a lot of support in your lower back, as well as support on either side of your head, eliminating the bizarre contortion that the seat normally puts on your back and neck.  You stick your legs under the seat in front (but bending at the knees and sitting like a normal person worked just as well). The diagram makes it look uncomfortable, but it was anything but.
I put it in place leaving Dallas Thursday, blew it up as as directed, buckled in, reclined my seat after we took off ... and then woke up an hour later.  I don't even remember falling asleep.  I bought a second for my wife immediately, as she has some trips coming up as well.
Again, the "LOM" header is always your indication that the upcoming post won't have anything to do with practice in Eastern District federal court - but if your practice involves traveling to our fair district - maybe this one will after all.  No promises whether courts will discount travel inconvenience for witnesses if plaintiffs offer to provide them with one of these, but I'd sure say it reduced my inconvenience!